How to Eco - FAF Tutorial 6 - Supreme Commander Forged Alliance 

Yeah, I prefer watching online, infinitely more entertaining and fewer migraines.

This made me giggle have a like

Well no wonder i suck at this game, i have no clue what you are saying

@@samuelyeet6006 its usually not worth doing that for the reclaim. But if you are going to build t3 mafabs anyways and you will have long term production rolling from them - then why not.

Hi necromancers, how’s life as an undead? :D

@@Penemue Hey Heaven, quit 2-3 years ago myself. but mostly for different reasons. Yeah some balance changes were bad. But for supcom in general - if you take a few months off, then it takes a bit to get back to the level you played at. And with everybody so focussed on their ranks.. if I as a 1300 rated player come back and perform worse there is just so much negativity. I spent some thoughts on why it takes a bit to come back. And that is all the decisions you need to make. If you play the game a lot, then most of the things you do, you can do on the side. Like where to build the factories, when to go for t2/3. How much power you need for what. After being gone for a while you need to think about all these again. It takes from your time that you should spent on stuff like identifying weaknesses to exploit at your opponent or just scout the map to identify threats early on. Years ago I used a smurf account to get back into the game. And yeah I preferred setons over other maps in the past. Simply because it was easier to master one map, rather than mastering all parts of the game at the same time. I expanded from there. Focussed on Setons air, then Front/Navy, then digged deeper into other maps. Unfortunately that is pretty unpleasant. But I am also not entirely sure how to improve the ranking system without making it super complex. Maybe a small drop over time that you can quickly catch up again in a few games without having such a high penalty for having a big number of games. And all these mods making life easier - just integrate them into the game or don't use them at all. I do mind the eco manager much more than a bot that reclaims for you. That focus fire mod you spoke of is a big no for me too.

​@@Bruellhusten123 in MMR systems the best solution is the least popular: calculate how much time away subtracts from MMR for the rank the player was at before they stopped playing. For instance a top rated and extremely low rated wouldn't lose a lot but in the middle of the pack where the juicy points should be if the model has not been tampered with (boosters, not really a problem with SC) you would lose a lot quickly for not playing with a floor. But that "feels terrible" so they keep the MMR static and you just lose it through playing

I dont know

Yeah but it takes more time to build so many ACUs so I think it s worth building both of them. With 3 t3 Mass extractors surrounded by storages you get more than 100 mass /s and you build them pretty fast

eh, scus are superior because they are not static and can cannbuild stuff. also just annupgre awwy from becoming respectable pew pew in times of need.

@@abcd-yg2rx he is talking about mass fabbers, not extractors. extracrors are the ceapest source of matter flat. fabbers are not.

I never need all of that because I'm usually dead long before

The explosive point is fair, but in campaign when I want to spam income, I'll reach 1000 in no time by building mass fabs and power generators, but if I try to spam SACUs by supporting a quantum gate, it takes like 5 times as long to reach 1000 mass income.

plus you cant fully utilize mass storage bonus

@@TyLee960 The mass storage bonus for them is negligible. Its far more cost effective to just stack t3 gens and fabs together. U get a 75% energy discount for a fully surrounded fab. A fully mass storage surrounded fab, which means 12 storage, has a bonus of 50%. A safer and still efficient way is to put lone t3 gens surrounded by t2 fabs. U can also put the t3 stack in smaller stacks at different places. Put a stack of 4-9 gens/fabs together, maybe with a shield too.

@@cobrazax for me, by the time im doing all that kind of stuff, power is not an issue, mass is always an issue

@@jordy1278 Sure but its more efficient this way overall. It saves mass for extra gens too. And u also need energy for shields

Yeah boys let’s build an explosive grid that’s so expensive it wont have repaid its cost yet by the time enemy completes their t3 stationary arty. Which happens to oneshot said grid.

NO! Put some masfabs next to factory and see...

what does ctrl k do?

@@EvilNecroid destroys selected unit/building

I wish he covered this in his Piano video, because it seems like the ctrl+K wreck gives you several hundred mass for free whereas the upgrade doesn't given you anything :X

CT: let's make almost everything in this game explosive assistant: you must be joking right? CT: well we can make an exception for mexes assistant: thank god players: lets ring mexes with fabs to make them explosive!

^^ That doesn't make them unusable though. Take a map like canis for example. The t2 mass fab rings around the 4 mexes at the starting location are much more space efficient, which you will need on canis. It's 2 major weaknesses are t3 arty, which wil probably be build much later in the game then the fabs (And then you still have to break through the shielding) and t3 bombers, which will almost never happen in your main base on canis because they would be targetting t3 pgens or acu's, not the t3 mexes. Ofcourse there's a lot of situations where they are bad, but the same can be said of the t3 pgen template

on a serious note, here is why they aren't in the video: the video is presenting the results of an efficiency calculation for economic structures. i can't calculate the efficiency of t2 mass fabs without also considering the cost of the t3 pgen to operate them. that's why i'm showing mass fabs next to t3 pgens. think about my other options: if i just showed the fabs next to a storage ring around a mex, i'd disregard the t3 pgen and the numbers would be wrong. people would assume t2 mass fabs are super cool and just spam these instead of teching mexes. if i showed the fabs next to a storage ring around a mex AND a t3 pgen, stuff gets difficult to explain because it would arise questions of the right ratio/distribution between mass and power yadda yadda this is where flexible eco management starts yadda yadda complicated mess. let's keep things simple. of course you can place your fabs where you want.

t3 mass fabricators are fine in the current balance

What, where did you see this ? It's only not worth it when surrounding it takes forever as you need to travel your build power but even then it's questionable.

Mylaur what the hell are you talking about? I told you that I’ve seen in other video that it’s too early to surround T2 mass extractor with them because it gives you only +3 minerals income (while upgrading to first T3 gives you much more). And the maker of that video used math to check if mass used to surround T2 extractors is more efficient than just upgrading to T3 and then surrounding it. And found out that it is, that’s all.

@@andreypopov3400 T2 > T3 cost 4600 mass and gives 12 more yield. Encircling a T2 with 4 storage cost 800 mass and gives 3 more yield. So by encircling 3 T2 extracters you get the same yield as going to T3, but it will cost 2400 mass instead of 4600. The energy cost is also a lot less for the storage. The only time T2 > T3 is better than the storage is when you can reclaim high yield stuff on the map, but in that case you could also simply build a few more engineers and do both the reclaim and the storage.

+Reviire: ML and Chicken aren’t very difficult to kill, but GC and Mega need to be on low HP or the ACU needs a place to hide and assist from (water, allied exp to hide behind, etc.)

(1) if you build the mex, you spend 36m. it will repay its own cost in 18s as its rate is at 2m/s. but if the enemy kills and reclaims your mex, you have spent the 36m base cost and an extra 0.81x36m=29.16m because that's the mass your enemy receives. 36+29.16=65.16m; 65.16m/2m/s=32.58s which rounds to 33s. (2) watch the map specific build order video for standard air build on gap of rohan; this is where i explain the RAS requirements. you can use the same build with minor modifications on other maps.

hey thanks for the detailed explanation but I still don't get why you would spend more mass when the enemy reclaim your mex. What is the link between spending the original 36m and actually losing an additional 29.16 from the enemy reclaim? Once your mex is destroyed, how would the enemy reclaim have any impact on your economy? (yeah I am bad at math/logic I know).

You are correct that your enemy gaining mass doesn't actually cost you anything, if we view your economy and the economy of your enemy as strictly separated.But in a competitive scenario we ask: which of the two ecos is ahead in mass, energy and buildpower? When the enemy gets your reclaim, you increase his mass and lower yours in comparison.

yes

No

Maybe

I don't know, can you repeat the question?

I just tested and it does not.

Mollygaga42 Because if you have more than 30% (I think that’s the number) then it won’t patrol reclaim. Having low mass then patrolling is how it works.

Yeah in the early stage I think is probably better to reclaim if you rush. It is better if you focus all the mass into the unit production. You can get all the mass you need by reclaiming from the landscape or stealing it from the enemy s base. This way you get more mass without wasting mass and energy to extract it.

Another reason is that it is a lot faster, I think heaven has a video illustrating this. Furthermore attack-move is what you usually want to do if not manually reclaiming, one reason is so the engi becomes idle when done, which is faster to spot and put to good use again

at the time of making this video, the second shield upgrade had like >50k HP and the aeon acu isn't unsupported. if it's defending a base attacked by a GC for example, there will be more shields covering it, a few units also applying DPS, etc. against a fatboy, you obviously need to use terrain or an air drop to get close. without rewatching the video, i think the point i wanted to make is that you can sometimes kill expensive units inexpensively and get an economic advantage from that

@@Penemue thanks a lot for replying!

Yes, there are benefits - it increases the income of mass fabricators

Watch the generic build orders video for a basic starting sequence that won’t make you run out

You should wait for t2 before ringing your mexes in full as the storages aren't cheap.

The option is automatically on, but if for whatever reason you don't want that, you can turn it off and all the mass your taking in goes to waste.

This is all dated anyway.

Too expensive. It s a good choice in the later stages of the games otherwise there are many ways to win other than building this one

@@abcd-yg2rx that is true but man what a cool building!

I mean it's a win condition...

you wouldn't use it because the purpose of t3 mass generators is economizing on population slots, space, engineer movement time and stations' idle time. the mass storage ring contradicts each of these ideas.

yeah I was just curious about the numbers but dotn bother

@@peddazz2365 I'm also curious and wanted to know for sure. Heaven also said in some comments that T3 fabs have been buffed (not sure how much and such). So the current numbers are as followed: T3 pgen with 16 T2 mass fabs: resource over time 16 mass, 1204 energy. Build cost 17 units, 6440 mass, 121600 energy, 32 tiles. (402,5 mass build cost for each mass/second T3 mass fab with 12 mass storage: resource over time 21 mass, -1500 energy. Build cost 13 units, 6400 mass, 138000 energy, 21 tiles. So if for some reason you made too many pgens and really only need that extra mass, then T3 mass fab with storage ring is a good option, because it cost less mass, gives more mass and uses less space. If you don't have the energy then it ain't worth it. The energy difference is so big that is means you need to add a T3 pgen (3240 mass) somewhere and in that case the total mass cost will be big enough for it to be less mass efficient. On top of that it will require more tiles and still gives less energy. Something I often use(d) is a shield ringed by 4 T3 pgens, add 4 T3 mass fabs so each is next to 2 T3 pgens. Resources over time: 64 mass, 6152 energy. Build cost (UEF shield in this case): 9 units, 32260 mass, 765400 energy (no joke about that number XD), 109 tiles. This is also more expensive than the T3 pgen with a ring of T2 mass fabs when looking at mass efficiency. It is still the case if the surplus of energy goes to T3 mass fab ringed by storage, although the difference gets a lot smaller. This is in any case more space and unit efficient if that is what you need. TLDR Heaven's T3 pgen ringed with mass fab is in most cases the best. Yours is good when you have a big surplus of energy and has best tile efficiency. Mine has best unit efficiency and can be paired with yours, because of the big energy surplus.

@@Vincrand ah thanks for the breakdown, I suppose you can also have a lot of energy to spare when you build a lot of RAS SACUS

​@@peddazz2365 ​ @Pedda ZZ Indeed. Also something I forgot to mention about my build is that it's easier to shield and up to 6 mass storage can be added to each T3 mass fab (with 5 you get +2 if I remember correctly), but it's also one big bomb. Some things in the game require more energy than normal. In this case I'm thinking about billy nuke, pure air production, shields/ stealth and what not on various units (when massed), higher amount of shields in your base/ outward eco. When this doesn't apply to your game then your build is good, mine is basically never really worth it. Done some calculations and the higher yield energy yield compared to Heaven's example is simply not worth it (less efficient than T2 pgen). I think it's worth to add mine in the conversation, because I'm I know that I'm not the only one doing this. And if I didn't do these calculations, then I'd still be doing it today. At a first glance it makes sense for it to work, but it seems like there are better options.